Printer Intervention on the Work: Pedro Hagenbach and the Edition of Proverbios de Séneca (Toledo 1500)

Abstract

In 1500 Pedro Hagenbach printed in Toledo the fourth edition of Proverbios de Séneca, translation and gloss made by Pedro Díaz de Toledo in the middle of the 15th century of an Seneca's apocryphal transmitted under the name Proverbia uel Sententiae.

The Pedro Habengach's edition stands out above the incunabula editions of Proverbios de Séneca (Zamora 1482, Zaragoza 1491, Sevilla 1495, Toledo 1500 y Sevilla 1500): collation of these editions reveals that the printer would have intervened on the text of the work mainly through omissions. We found four different categories of omissions: omissions of text portions that seem irrelevant, omissions of citations of authorities, omissions of the repetition of the proverb in the end of the gloss, even omissions of proverbs. Through this intervention on the text, Pedro Hagenbach would have modified the transmission of the work. We can see it in the only edition of the post-incunabula era: the edition of Jacobo Cromberger in Sevilla (1512). This fact opens the next question: how far reaches the printer's work in early printing?